The New BiggerPockets Real Estate Forums Are Now Live!

It has been a few years since we last did an update to our forums, and I'm excited to announce that we've just launched the latest update - BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing Forums Version 3.0! This update is the result of a vast amount of user feedback.  Not many people were fans of the manilla folder based design of the last forum version;  it was ugly, extremely cumbersome, and difficult to navigate.  We believe that the new forums have made the navigation and the user experience faster and better.  With over 270,000 posts, it was about time for a bit of freshening up.

Here is a list of new features:

Forum-Wide Changes

- Expanded template - We've widened the discussion area of the forums and have expanded the template enough to place new advertising (we have to pay the bills somehow) and access to both forum categories and important resources in the right sidebar.

- New Forum Category Navigation - In order to jump to different categories in the old forums, you needed to do so from the main forum index.  Now, you can jump to any category using the new accordian navigator in the right sidebar.  Just click on a super category and you'll find sub categories and the forums that are contained within.

- Simplified Sharing - the forums now have a share button at the top right, making it easy to share different topics and any other page in them on places like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and many others.  Please help spread the word about your favorite forums and discussionsby using the share button!

- New Resources Navigation - We've moved the resources from the left site to the place below the forum category navigation.  The resources are concealed within another accordian. 

- Removed Tag Could - The tag cloud was rarely used so we removed it.  Those members interested in searching through the tags can do so using the TAGS link at the bottom of forum pages. 

Main Forum Page

- New Topic Creation - There was no way to create a new forum topic from the main index until now.  Just click the CREATE A TOPIC button and you'll be directed to a form where you can do just that.  The new topic form now allows you to select the forum category that you'd like to post under.  Creating new topics can now be done across the entire forum.

- Old "Manilla Envelope Navigation" is history - One of the most hated things on BiggerPockets since its launch was the forum index page which was full of pastel "envelopes." It was very difficult to navigate and horrible to look at.  This has been replaced by a more user-friendly interface (see below).

- Recent Topics are at the heart of the main forum index - The aforementioned "manilla envelopes" have been replaced by our recent topics on the main index of the forums, and as I mentioned, category navigation is now on the right sidebar of the page.

- Tabbed Navigation Refinished - We've eliminated a few forum tabs that were confusing and difficult to use and have added new tabs that we felt should be present on the main forum index.   The current lineup of tabs include: Recent Discussions (the pre-selected tab), My Discussions (shows all discussions you've participated in), Unanswered (shows those forum topics that haven't had a response - a great place to jump in and get involved), and My Watched Topics (New - this shows all forum topics that you're watching and getting email notifications for).

Category Pages

- Setting Your Favorite Categories - You can now designate those categories that you frequent the most and quickly get to them.  Just go to any category page and select the checkbox next to "Set category as Favorite" at the top of the page.  By doing so, this category will then appear in the "My Favorite Categories" dropdown at the top of the right sidebar navigation.  This should help those of you who focus on a handfull of forums only, by quickly allowing you to jump to those areas.

- Sticky Posts - are now bold and stand out better.

Individual Thread Pages

- Improved pagination - Now you can skip to different pages of a thread at both the top and bottom of any thread.

- Removed ad after 1st post - We've removed the ad that could be found after the first post in any thread, so that browing the thread is easier.  These were distracting and to be honest, ineffective.

Additional Info

We've got plans to improve the forums further, and will be focusing on speed improvements next.  While the forums have been sped up, there is a lot of room to go . . . we've got a few other tricks up our sleeves as well.

We hope you like the new forums;  though we know it will take some getting used to, we are confident that one you acclimate to the change, you'll find your experience on the forums to be vastly improved.